Far Away

We all make history. By every moment we let pass us or a simple small step we take, we are being translated into words. When I crouched behind that car in the parking lot that Sunday morning circa 2015, calling my little sister’s name and hiding my face till she, in an effort to see who the caller was, misstepped and bruised her left cheek, I did not know what I was doing. I did not know history was watching.

So yes: even me, as I write this, and you, as you read—we are history in the making.

A common (mis)understanding, I suppose, is that a mention of the word itself, history, often suggests that some grandiose effort must always preface its eponymous book. Something huge, something worthy. But what that really says, or rather, does, is contradict history, which is supposed to (loosely) mean a product of a series of events—the universe as an open-ended continuum. The point at which the attenuation usually seems to surface is where the grandness of one event illusively eclipses another.

But this is only a gimmick of memory.

It can be deceptive, memory, but it is also the most important tool for self-preservation. No wonder historian Tóyìn Fálọlá notes in his memoir, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt, that ‘one must understand memory and history.’ It is true.

A stream doesn’t flow so long that it forgets its source—so a Yorùbá proverb translates. Lọ́unlọ́un’s tagline reads: remembering defining moments in Africa. This emphasizes memory as the lens and Africa as the focus. The responsibility of telling our stories, of our history, rests on us and us only. In a wave of radical movements where young people are starting to stand up to stereotypes and jettison crooked identities—through visual art, documentaries, archives, activism, etc.—Lọ́unlọ́un, a Yorùbá word which could loosely translate as ‘far away,’ is another effort directed at that campaign. A campaign that has never been more urgent than it is now.

Months ago in an email to Victor, I remember casually (or not) noting that I was looking forward to co-writing a new chapter into history. And, really, that is what this has turned out to be. It is what we all ever do.

I appreciate Victor for his confidence in my ability, Angel, my colleague, and everyone who thought Lọ́unlọ́un was worth submitting to. 

I will leave you with one of the most important maxims that drive me, one of my oldest—a quote from Amanda Gorman. She says, “In this truth, in this faith we trust. For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.”